I am a person who took a very long time to embrace the term “body positivity.” I used to struggle with coming to terms with how I looked and the incessant comments from people about my “less-than-ideal” weight and looks. But somehow, I overcame it, at least to an extent, and became body-positive and more confident in my skin, something that I have written about in multiple blogs.
However, being 100% body-positive all day, every day is not an easy task. There are days when I look in the mirror and see my ever-growing dark circles and tired face and go, “Hari! Look at me! I look bad!” He gives me a strange look and says, “What are you talking about?? You look as good as ever.” Brownie points to him for that!
But on those days, his comments do not do much to build back my confidence in how I look, and I am ready to whine again about how pathetic I look when, suddenly, two little angels walk in, oblivious to what is happening there. And I bite my tongue and stop myself. Because the last thing I want my kids to learn from me is to berate themselves for their appearance and wallow in a feeling of insecurity or an inferiority complex like I did till I was well into my grownup years.
“Everyone is beautiful” and the importance of being body-positive are things that my girls have been taught from a very young age. There are days when Vedu encounters body-shaming from kids her own age at school or in the play area—something I am sure these kids learned from the grownups around them. There are also times when people comment on “how lean and skinny she is” right in front of me. I don’t see her flinch or look upset for a single moment.
Instead, she replies firmly, irrespective of the age or status of who is on the receiving end, “I am healthy and happy. That’s what matters.” If they push it again, she goes, “I am not comfortable with anyone commenting on my body. I don’t do that to anyone either.” If they still don’t get the message, she keeps her head held high and walks away from them, cutting short the conversation. If I feel that it continues even beyond her best efforts, that’s when I step in as the Mama bear and firmly put an end to it, making it absolutely clear to whoever it is on the other end that my daughter’s word is the final word on this and that they had better respect that.
If she was brought up the way I was, she would have had to swallow her pride and play along with a smile on her face as such comments ripped open a wound in her mind, leaving her insecure for life. But no! That’s not how she or Taaru will grow up.
They will grow up knowing that it is not nice to make comments on others’ appearance unless they have a compliment to pay someone. They will grow up knowing that the elders in their lives saying “You should see the way he looks!” with a disgusted scowl on the face while talking about someone they are not fond of is not the right way of criticizing someone’s actions and that they can criticize someone without dragging their looks into their comments. They will grow up knowing that they need not overdo “respect” by silently taking attacks on their appearance and, instead, that they have every right to stand up for themselves and cut short such attacks firmly and politely. They will grow up knowing that if a bully’s feelings are hurt by them standing up for themselves and they play the victim card, they need not feel guilty about it and they can choose to simply ignore it without making it their problem.
But for them to do all that, I need to raise them to be confident in their skin, confident of how they look, confident of who they are beneath appearances. And for that, I need to be confident in my skin, confident of how I look, confident of who I am beneath appearances. I need to block out negative comments from people who simply don’t matter. I need to fill my mind with the “Wow Amme! You look beautiful” comments from my girls and the still-“blown away by you” looks that I get from Hari. That, that is how I learn to embrace body positivity, even on my most exhausted days. Because only when I absolutely take that in, only when I am truly body-positive, only then, do my girls learn to do it too.
Also published on Medium.
Leave a Reply